It was small at first. A little twinge among the population of Queens. Emotions ran high. A cloud of fear swept over the borough until it had trapped the citizens of Queens in its icy grip. Fear was a curious thing. Fight or flight was never more obvious than when the whole of the population was feeling it. Some doors were dead bolted, other hurriedly packed their bags and took recklessly to the streets. Most though were ready to fight this thing they couldn't see. Riots broke out, and those hoping to flee were trapped as the streets were overtaken, people abandoning their cars and acidic smoke filling the air.

Alex stood at the center of it all, eyes trained on the sky. "Keep them distracted," he said, turning to Daisy, "I need to find a bird." His eyes were blocked with dark glasses, and he looked entirely unassuming next to Daisy. Until it was time for Alex to reveal himself she would play the role of the one in charge.

The figure standing next to him looked particularly childlike in stature, wearing the armor he had worn before his evolution or puberty and swimming in wide-legged pants, holding a hammer that almost matched her height at her side, distorting the image further. Not that she seemed to feel as small as she appeared; she stood rigidly straight, free hand on her hip and masked chin up, but she didn't care to look up to the empty sky with Alex.

At the eye of the storm, the anxiety that thrummed through the city was at its peak. Not a single bird remained, flocks still visible over the river as they fled, dark clouds warped by the smoke and lick of fires that spread rapidly and the glint and shimmer of the glass that littered the streets from broken windows, windshields, lamps and headlights. Not that Alex had meant one with feathers. A particularly violent scuffle broke out to their right, drawing the child warrior's sharp gaze toward a dozen men scattering blood and teeth over the sidewalk in front of an electronics store, beating each other savagely and growing more manic with every heavy impact of bone and flesh. They were going to need more victims soon. Already, they were throwing their weight Alex's way, spilling off of the sidewalk into the littered street, then barrelling blindly toward the next easy target. The ground trembled, knocking jagged glass teeth loose from windowpanes, and Daisy raised her hammer, eyes glowing blue, and swung. Everything looked wrong here. It was hard to see through a tunnel of black and sheen of red.

The cab driver had abandoned Justin and the car in the mess of a roadblock that had been created, and for a long time that was exactly where he stayed, huddled up in the back seat floor so that no one could see him, trying anxiously to get a signal on his phone. But the light was getting dimmer, and more than a few cars had all ready had their windows smashed in.

He carefully crawled back up into the leather seat and squinted out the window on one side before shifting over to check the other side. ...What the hell was that supposed to be? He scrambled back to the other side of the car, as far from the hammer wielding creature as possible and fumbled for the door handle with sweaty hands.

"Oh Christ, Anthony, I swear to god- if you save me now I will never ever fuck with you again."

This street was uncomfortably quiet, all of the little rats in their holes with the sound of the riots oozing through the alleys. Daisy easily vaulted on top of one of the packed cars to make her way through, peering across this junkyard avenue as she stepped from hood to trunk with the five foot hammer hefted over her shoulder. Daisy's job got easier with every passing second; the panic gathered like a snowball, until it had enough momentum to spread the distraction entirely on its own.

Of course, every body taking cover from the worst of it was only sucking the energy out of this urban disaster. Her glowing blue eyes locked on the movement in the cab a handful of cars away, drawing her immediately in that direction and raising her free hand to the handle of her weapon. It took the length of one car for her to gather the power to swing over her shoulder, bringing the head of the hammer down on the roof of the cab and cracking it in two. The weight of the hammer carried straight to the asphalt, which shattered under the blow, throwing the pieces of the cab away from the impact and crunching painfully into the twisted metal around them.

It took Daisy about as long as Justin took to realize the hiccup in his handy solution to haul the hammer out of the pit she had made. Money, obviously, didn't appeal to her whether it was real or Justin's imaginary millions; she swung her weapon back to cut it across the pathetic figure huddled on the ground. She knew this idiot, didn't she? This looked like an appropriate position for him.

Cap circled the area on his sky cycle, reporting back to Tony while he looked for a place to set down. The closer he got the more the fear clawed at him.

"It's got a wide radius, but it seems to be centralized around Howard's Beach. Emergency crews aren't going to be ale to make it in here, try and divert them to Richmond Hill, any closer and they'll be useless," Steve instructed on the com, scaling down the side of a building and into the chaos in the streets.

This wasn't like a normal fight, these were civilians. He was pretty sure he saw a group of nuns in a fight with some gang bangers, and very much winning.

He didn't have much time to think about what he was and wasn't ready to do to stop this when he had to jump to dodge a car. It crashed into the wall and Cap wrenched the driver out before they could speed off again, throwing the car into park and tossing the keys before denting the door shut for good measure. They didn't need a two ton machine to help them do anymore damage.

Steve raised his shield to block the man as he hurled himself at him, and shoved him away, maybe too hard, he took a bit of a tumble and seemed to rethink who he was attacking.

"Stay away from me-!" he screamed with an accusing point, and he hurled garbage can at Steve before taking his chance and bolting.

Bruce had been in Queens from Dinner when the chaos broke out now he was dodging rioters and pulling looters off of shop owners. There was a loud crash from behind Cap as Bruce came flying through the window of a Radioshack with an old man trying to strangle him.

That...was dangerous. And for more than the usual reasons, and even in this state Cap could remember that much.

"You don't want to do that, Sir," he snapped, vaulting over a stalled car and tugging the man off, "You won't like him when he's angry. Much worse than a Nazi, I promise." He got an elbow to the face, and the man bite down hard on Steve's arm.

Bruce wasn't sure what to do. On one hand he was an elderly civilian on the other Bruce was really pissed about being called a Nazi, the guy wasn't even old enough to have in WWII! The closest thing to him was hiss cellphone he hurled it at the old man dinging him hitting him right in the temple.

"Come on! You're fight is with me dad," He called not realizing his error.

"Get her!"a man called after Wicked as she ran down an alley way. She knew the risk she was taking when she broke into the Rite Aid for a first aid kit. But she needed it. She was housing the wounded in a pub. The last building with it's windows in tact on that street.They just needed to make it until SHIELD came. This was all familiar, like a bad memory of District X manifesting in reality.

If she could just make it a few more blocks she'd get to the people who needed her help. But her heart felt like it was about to explode and the streets were changing. She fell to her knees and the first aid kit skid across the pavement. It felt like a panic attack;the air was too thick to breathe. She looked at her hands covered in blood. The streets ran red with the blood of humans dragged out by their hair and slaughtered. This was not safe grounds they'd go after mutants next...wait that was District X ; she was in Queens. But the streets smelled and looked like Mutant Town bathed in blood and on fire. No this couldn't have been Queens.She was back on the streets of District X and this was it. She was going to die. No way out. Just death and chaos.

After catching the scene on the news, Kitty hurried as fast as she could, though she'd come to find that whatever was happening, it was far too late to stop it. "Please! I'm just trying to hel--" There was no way to get it through the woman's panic-stricken mind. Kitty let the bullets pass through her before she grabbed her and yanked the gun out of the woman's hand, then stuck her hand inside her head to render her unconscious. By the time she woke up, Kitty hoped this would all be over. Quickly, she took a woman to a safe, isolated place, running quickly, her own chest tight with anxiety, and after she'd dropped her off with several others, went back into the chaos. As she sprinted, Kitty had heard something loud and explosive and looked over her shoulder, unsure of which direction it came from. Distracted, she slammed into someone and stumbled forward and hit the side of a car. Touching the back of her head, Kitty groaned, blinking away the cloud blurring her vision before she'd seen that the person she ran into was Wicked. "Wicked? Wicked!" Quickly scrambling to her feet, Kitty ran to her friend.

Kitty the ground the again hard, sucking in a hiss through her teeth as rubble dug into her spine. But she managed to roll over and get back up, "Wick, it's--" Wide eyed, brought a hand up carefully, heart racing, and the fear gripping her throat as she asked, "Wick, what are you doing? It's me, it's Kitty." She had her own powers to rely on, though she didn't know if what an army of ghosts would feel like going through her, and even if she'd feel nothing, she still didn't want to know. That was the least of her worries, though - she knew Wicked was capable of a lot more.

Good time to come back, huh? It wasn't home, but New York was as close to a familiar haunt as they came. For all its offensive smells and general smudginess, Logan still favored the busy metropolis over many others. He knew its streets, its corners, its hidey-holes. From the docks to District X, Lower East to Upper West. It was the kind of place where he grouchily reminisced about New York City's hayday over a bottle of cheap beer, and it seemed like the logical stopping point on his way to track down the good professor.

But he didn't remember such chaos. The violence, the panic, the mobs. Flashes of WWII flickered in Logan's broken memory bank, but that war never reached New York. The same, but different. This was modernized insanity. Was nuclear war declared with Russia, and no one thought to tell Logan? Maybe the president had been shot. Or someone found Linbergh's baby. Something had to be at the heart of this, something...

He felt the twinge. Right at the back of his neck, prompting the coarse hair there to prickle. He frowned, even as he ignored the angry shouting nearby. Something felt wrong, off. His heart started beating faster, but he was standing still. Disturbed, he stared at his hands, turning them over slowly as if drugged. He felt that animal, pushing its way forward. He fought it, trying to regulate his breathing. Find his center, focus, breathe out -- snikt!

This was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. From the few humans she subdued with her touch something hellish was was taking over their minds. She was still searching for Wicked when she came across another victim hunched over. She pulled Logan out of the line a fire and into a building just in time for a Moltov Cocktail to land in the same spot he'd been standing.

The bird Phobos watched for was high above the bay, and Nick Fury was on it when things went fuck ass crazy down in Queens. At early word of the rioting, Fury held back his people and waited for the police and their SWAT team to handle it. When reports came that capes had joined in the chaos, Fury deployed teams of agents into the fray who would send back communication that the cops had joined in the rampage.

There was radio silence when even the agents succumbed to whatever the fuck was happening down there and became part of the commotion (those who didn't run and hide did, anyway). S.H.I.E.L.D. lost any link to reliable information and Fury ordered the helicarrier over the city in the hope of quarantining the area and shutting this down before the terror and chaos spread over the entire city.

The nearer they got to Queens the more uneasy the agents in the command center became and a few of them left their posts to pace the expansive space, apparently absorbed in their own thoughts. Fury didn't know what the hell this was, but he didn't like it. He demanded they stop, outside the boundaries where the media reported the worst pandemonium, waiting for renewed radio contact and calling for S.H.I.E.L.D. to set up a perimeter. Try and keep the crazy confined and hope it wouldn't spill out.

Jasper had hardly been awake minutes before he was ordered to remain in the observation room, groggy and hungry, but the fridge was right there. At first, he hadn't felt particularly put out--it wasn't as though he could go very far, anyway, according to his watch, so he lingered on the sterile smelling bed, playing Chess against his phone and growing incrementally uneasy as the doctors that were supposed to be recording the status of his unfortunate condition neglected to return.

By the time they did, Jasper was pacing, games forgotten and heavy, black bag packed with all of the sustenance he needed for the coming weeks clutched in his arms. "Can I go?" he demanded, more rude than his mother had raised him to be and forcing him to sniff and correct, "Sorry, may I?"

One of the medical staff locked the door, eyes locked on Jasper's the whole time through the window. Gingerly, she stepped back, watching warily until the last second when she turned and fled, leaving Jasper alone again. "Hey!" he called after her, dropping the bag and pounding on the window. "HEY! What's happening?!"

Permission to land was almost easier to get than the Cessna 172 had been, as Alex radioed in for emergency permission. He'd stepped out of the plane and onto the deck of the Helicarrier, and the apex of the storm had followed him. He stopped to collect a few things from a nearby fighter jet and while chaos descended on S.H.I.E.L.D. a strange face appeared to free Jasper, peering in through the window and gesturing for him to move back.

As though the torn apart room wasn't sign enough. Jasper might not have known that face, but he wasn't going to stay in this mess any longer; he was already several attempts into throwing himself at the door, shoulder bruised and knuckles and fingers bleeding from the bent and twisted metal he'd used to batter the window first. He threw himself against the door face first when he saw the figure approach, hands pressing smears of dark, dead blood on the glass and red eyes wide and panicked, one fist coming away to start pounding before he didn't even have to demand the attention. He only nodded wildly, clearly reluctant to step any further away from his chance at freedom before he peeled himself off of the door for the stranger to do whatever damage it took to get out.

For one second, Jasper, soulless and weightless, might have achieved nirvana. The sky was a rich, dark blue above him, the sun just below the horizon and the last stain of cherry red kissing the edge of the world, and he didn't even have to take a breath of the chilly air or taste the smoke that billowed out of the side of the helicarrier after him. That was behind him, and the sky above and nothing below, and just for that second he was suspended in absolute peace, the anxiety clawing his guts raw magnificently gone the moment he stepped out into the open sky.

With a fluttering blink of his eyelashes, he spotted the black point twisting gently in the air above him, making him squint and focus, and at all once the anxiety was back. That was a gun falling after him, and they were falling fast. Panic slammed him right in the center of his chest, making Jasper twist to see the rapidly approaching ground and sending him spiraling, out of control. He was clutching something like he could hold onto solid ground in this state. The bag!

The first arm went through a strap easily, but the pack flew away from Jasper then, making him kick and twist in the air to get control over his descent as soon as possible, very fast now, any second, this was not a safe drop height. Blindly desperate, he deployed the parachute over one shoulder, snapping him back up into the sky and his arm cleanly out of socket. He gave a yelp, eyes squeezed closed, nirvana completely forgotten, and pumped his legs ineffectually to try to alleviate the excruciating pain of is arm trying to tear away from his body.

Eventually, something had to give, and death felt suddenly very welcome. Jasper slipped free from the chute, squinting his eyes open just in time to see it whipped away in the wind before he crashed full force into a winter brown, icey rooftop garden.

On the street below, a gun fell out of the sky, bouncing off of the asphalt twice and coming to a skidding stop miraculously intact. Of the few that noticed the queer arrival, most froze, knowing they weren't alone. The tide of this particular brawl might change significantly in the next second.

The street was quiet for a minute, before a loud crack echoed from down the block and a body came skidding along the pavement like a stone skipping across water, and Cap finally came to a halt just shy of the gun.

He blinked at it groggily. Where the hell had that come from? He stretched to grab it and fired three shots back the way he'd come at the figure stocking him.

The panicked people around him scattered as he raised the gun, knowing better even in this state than to face that head on. They had each other to deal with, too, after all, and doorways and alleys to claim first, or most violently.

Under the noise of the riot and the fire, heavy stone dragged across stone, a growling rumble that announced Daisy's approach as she hauled her hammer behind her by one listless arm. She didn't flinch as Cap took up the gun, but turned her shoulder toward him, easily sliding just out of target for two of his wild shots and taking the third with just a snarl and brief pause. It pressed a hole in the armor over her shoulder, but that was far from the first bullet Daisy had taken, and such a little sting could barely give someone with the power to move the Earth pause.

With a roar, she swung her hammer up and over her shoulder to slam it down on the asphalt, cracking the street in two. The crack shot toward Captain America like lightning, throwing up stone, glass and cars in its path and ready to swallow him into the shuddering ground.

Whoever those people were, Cap hoped they'd gotten well out of the way, because this street wasn't going to be here in a matter of minutes. All Tony was getting at this point was panting and grunts as Steve rolled, and curled into his shield as the ground swallowed him him. He narrowly avoided being crushed by a car, and when the street grew still again he struggled to free himself from the tomb of earth, metal and asphalt.